Adventures in Oslo and More

Me again!! I have lots to report today, in no small part due to the fact that Katie and I took a trip to Oslo, Norway last weekend! I had a relatively quiet week apart from a horrendous date that I went on with a guy from New Zealand. I had met him at a bar the weekend before and he seemed like a nice person, apart from the fact that he seemed to enjoy staring at me creepily, so I agreed to go out with him on Tuesday night, thinking 'What could I possibly lose?' As it turns out, I lost a minor portion of my sanity that night.





The evening started off well enough when we met up in Covent Garden and tried to figure out where to go for dinner. We finally settled on a nice Italian place. This is where the fun part of the night ended. The conversation followed a set pattern which went something like this:





Me: So, why did you decide to move here?


Bad Date Guy: *Stares* ..... *Snickers for some unexplained reason*


Me: What's wrong?


BDG: *Stares* .... Nothing's wrong, why?


Me: Ummm... no reason...?


BDG: Yeah ummm... yeah, just wanted a change. *Stares*


Me: *Twitch*





Repeat for approximately 1.5 hours, during which time I





1. Considered running out of the restaurant as fast as I possibly could.


2. Considered slapping BDG and telling him to stop being creepy.


3. Considered faking an emergency phone call, i.e. the classic getaway excuse.


4. Excused myself to go to the bathroom only so I could kill some time while trying to think of things to say to him and how to end the date.





In the end, I ended up promptly requesting the bill upon completion of my apple pie and told the lovely chap that I had to go do my food shopping... at 9pm on a Tuesday night. It seemed to work though, as he didn't question my motives and even texted me later that night to say that he had a great time and would like to see me again. I would much rather walk on burning hot coals than see him again. In my defense, I would just like to say that I insisted on paying half the bill for the meal so I didn't just get a free meal then take off!!





Anyway, onto Oslo - what a gorgeous place!!!! We landed at an airport that was a 1.5 hour drive from Oslo, so we took an express bus into the city and the drive was gorgeous!! The landscape looks exactly like Ontario on the way to the Kawarthas where Katie's cottage is. It was so stunning and was hard to believe that we were in Norway and not back at home in Canada. We arrived in Oslo and quickly found our hotel, which was actually a ship 5 minutes from the central train station in the harbour!!! The ship had been transformed into a hostel and even had a pirate flag on it!!!!!! Our little cabin room was tiny but had a very comfortable bunk bed and our own bathroom!! The included breakfast was excellent as well. It was definitely a different experience and we had a good laugh over it. We basically spent the weekend walking around Oslo and taking in the city, but didn't get a chance to visit any museums. Oslo is a very leafy city with big wide sidewalks that people love to stroll down.

Skip ahead to 2 weeks later - it's now 8th Nov... oops!

Anyway, where was I? Oslo - yes, gorgeous city and lots of gorgeous blonde people there as well! There seemed to be tons of children everywhere as well, but very well behaved, which was a nice change! It was a really lovely break from the madness of London but we were still happy to get back 'home.' When you live in London, other cities are great to visit but you find that you run out of things to do very quickly in comparison. Here in London, there is literally never a shortage of things to do - even people that have lived here for years say that they haven't managed to do even a fraction of the things they'd like to because there just isn't enough time! It's fabulous!!!

I'm trying to think of what else I've been up to! I've mainly been working and going out really! Work is going great - my coworkers are absolutely fantastic and I'm being given a lot more respect and responsibility within my team. I work for the sales team and they've been inviting me to their meetings, and even invited me to the big sales offsite day at the Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf. It consisted of presentations on the various aspects of the BNY Mellon sales world in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I was really excited to have been invited to that and it was a great networking experience.

That was just this past Tuesday, and that night I went into the West End to meet about 11 of of my coworkers and a few friends to see Spamalot, the Monty Python musical, and have some dinner. It was a fabulous night and Spamalot was unbelievably hilarious!!!!!!!! I almost died laughing. If you're into that kind of humour, I highly recommend going to see it!!!!

I don't have any travelling weekends planned at the moment as I'm completely broke! I'm hoping to do a couple of trips in the new year, hopefully to Krakow and back to Scotland, because I fell in love with it last time I was there. Right now I'm just really looking forward to heading back home for the holidays. It'll be weird to come back here after flying home just for a visit, but that's all part of the experience of living abroad for a while! Katie and Andrea are heading home in December for good, so I won't be living with them anymore. I'm hoping that being without them won't make me incredibly homesick - we'll see!! I suppose that'll be a good test as to whether I'm really settled here. I have my friends at work and my flatmates, but don't know many other people otherwise!

I should probably get going as I'm at work - today is quite quiet - but I hope this update made at least a little bit of sense! Apologies for the massive delay in posting - I haven't been able to concentrate very well on anything for the last couple of weeks - not sure why!

I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope to see many of you in a month and a bit when I come home!!!!!!!!!

Lots of love,
Emily